Annals of Forest Science moves to full open access from January 1st, 2022

As of January 2022, Annals of Forest Science will become a fully open access (OA) journal.

All accepted papers will be published under a CC-BY 4 license, which means that all content published in the journal will be freely available to readers worldwide, enabling the widest possible dissemination, accessibility and reuse. Authors will also be able to freely disseminate published papers in all available formats (pdf and XML). Annals of Forest Science will only be accepting article for publication via the immediate OA route.

Along with our owner INRAE, Annals of Forest Science is committed to serve and meet the evolving needs of the research community and to ensure that high quality research in the area of forest and wood sciences is as widely accessible as possible to contribute to the growing body of important research and data in this field. The move to a fully OA model reflects our commitment as a journal to the principles of open science and research. By providing researchers with an OA publication platform that can amplify their research and enables compliance with funder and institutional OA requirements, as outlined by Plan S, we continue to maintain our high level of author service.

By publishing all content via the OA route, we can therefore support authors in ensuring their work has the widest possible reach, and enable all readers to access this content without paywalls or restrictions. The move is but one in a series of important initiatives intended to contribute to Open Science in the area of Forest & Wood Sciences including:
• accepting the submission of preprints made available on dedicated servers;
• partnering with the Peer Community in Forest & Wood Sciences (https://forestwoodsci.peercommunityin.org/);
• inciting our authors to provide access to the data sets associated with the published articles (https://ist.blogs.inrae.fr/afs/2019/07/24/guidelines-for-authors-how-to-share-your-datasets/);
• publishing data papers.

As under our current hybrid journal model, the costs of OA publishing services will be supported by article processing charges (APCs 1), payable by authors’ institutions or funders when articles are accepted for publication. More information can be found here for 2022 and please contact us for further information.

Annals of Forest Science maintains its high standards for scientific quality, with careful review by peers and quality assessments of the manuscripts. The journal publishes high-quality research papers, supported by robust results and data, and addresses important issues in tree biology, forest ecology, forest management and wood products. The aims of Annals of Forest Science are more than ever to make research results and research debates in this important area available to everybody. The journal will continue to ensure that data sets behind the research are made openly available, accessible and reusable. It is our aim and hope that the move to a fully OA model will not only ensure our authors can continue to contribute to high quality scientific debate and information in the area of forest and wood sciences in the widest possible way, but to also increase the trust in research and science based on evidence and transparent quality assessments.

About Annals of Forest Science

Annals of Forest Science is an official publication of the French National Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE). The journal is published by Springer Nature.
More information can be found here – https://www.springer.com/journal/13595

1 The APC charge for 2022 will be €1,690. More information will be available on the journal website in September.